Right now I’m flying back to LA after spending five days with my mom in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. This beautiful big sky country has been home to me every summer (and some other seasons) of my life. It is a place where my breath is immediately deeper, my nervous system instantly calms, and my soul knows peace.
Both of my daughters are now tucked away at school (one in college, the other in law school) so it was just me and my mom in Wyoming, as it had been so many times throughout the years.
My fourth grade year (when my dad retired from teaching and we moved from Santa Barbara to the Bay Area), my parents took a sabbatical of sorts. Both of my older siblings were away at school, so my parents thought this would be a perfect opportunity to experience a Wyoming winter (we were traditionally summer folks). This was long before talk of red and blue states, but nonetheless I stood out like a sore thumb at the local elementary school. I made some friends (especially Wally Benson, the bus driver) and was left to explore a snow-covered Wyoming, a magic I had never known.
Cut to these past five days, my mom and I have walked the trails and hills together every morning as we have all of my (almost) fifty-five years. She reflects with such awe that she has quite literally covered every last inch of these thousand acres many times over throughout the course of her life. She has passed down to me the utter joy of meandering, trudging, climbing, scrambling through nature as one of life’s greatest pastimes. At eighty-seven years young, she inspires all of us on the daily. On this visit, we trekked to a memorial rock she created for her own mother many years ago with a vista of the pond and then to a cairn she made for her now long departed Maisie dog right next to said pond where she (Maisie) loved to fetch sticks.
We then walked the fields in search of what could be our own perfect spots one day. It wasn’t morbid, it was lovely. We wondered where we’d be happiest for eternity, what was the best possible view, and balanced that with where our family members would actually visit.
My dad’s memorial is a several miles uphill hike away, and not many in our family trek there on the regular (me definitely being one) but my mama and I are clear we will want visitors, or, rather, we want to create a place where they will actually come, sit, and talk to us (therefore it can’t be too far or too hard a hike). I know my dad would appreciate the solitude of his spot, high up on a hill, far away from any potential small talk of strangers. Despite his great charisma in a crowd, his true nature was that of a hermit and to connect deeply with those he loved the most.
Ever since my dad died (over 21 years ago), I have taken to the Wyoming hills to have long, catch up conversations with him. I feel him strongly when I do, and he (or nature or god or the universe) is pretty great at tossing me the occasional sign (once a bald eagle was resting on the tree above his rock and more recently a hovering hawk).
I want this ritual for my daughters. I want them to know that I am never, ever gone. There will be a day (hopefully long, long from now) when they will not be able to touch and hold me, but I will stay in these hills, listen to their questions and eagerly await all updates.
Our people are alive as we allow them to be. I say this, of course, not to minimize the tremendous grief of losing someone, but as a reminder that they, surely, would want to stay alive for us in this new way.
I choose to believe that everything is divine.
“Everything” may be a stretch in the grandest scheme of it all, given senseless suffering and atrocities, but can we settle on most things?
So my mama and I walked these paths and hills, taking it all on, often pausing together to take the deepest breath and simply stand in the wonder of IT ALL.
She would stop, look all around, take a deep breath, and proclaim, “Hello, world!”
We don’t know how many more walks like that we’ll get. Hopefully hundreds. But we cherish each one as if it were our last.
Nothing is divine or everything is.
I choose everything.